Divided Selves
Until June 3; Talbot Rice, Edinburgh

The strangest thing has happened at Edinburgh University’s Talbot Rice Gallery. The two-tiered gallery space normally given over to contemporary art is bursting with pictures dating back to the 17th century. The grand old oil paintings of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery jostle with those of Aberdeen Art Gallery, the RSA, and other local lenders. They look very out of place, hung low on bright white walls, the cold light of day streaming through the skylights. Away from their usual musty gothic and neo-classical homes, it’s as if you’re seeing them for the first time.

The Talbot Rice, working with London’s Fleming Collection (whose mission is to promote Scottish art), has gathered together 85 Scottish self-portraits, ranging from the first known example in 1642 to a brand new commission from Glasgow sculptor Kenny Hunter. The chronological arrangement of works tells a strong story about Scotland’s introspective journey, exposing the current notion of conceptual art as the tip of a very deep Scottish iceberg.

The exhibition’s title is a direct reference to the work of legendary Glaswegian psychiatrist, RD Laing. In his seminal book of 1960, The Divided Self, Laing argued that everyone was divided in two, between their real, inner self and their false, outer self. The latter, he said, was a construct, the model of us that exists in other people’s minds. Those people exist to define us, and we them, in a perpetual hall of mirrors.

Centuries before, similar questions about the self had been addressed by luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment, David Hume and Adam Smith. Smith argued that you divided “into two persons” when examining your conscience, and the sceptical Hume, on entering his deepest self, found nothing of substance, but only an endless stream of perceptions.

Therein lies enough material for centuries of artistic exploration. Although the Scottish self-portrait started life as a status symbol, the Enlightenment transformed it into an arena for investigating ideas of the inner self and its outward reflection. Artists, steeped in philosophical thought, manipulated our relationship with their images so cleverly that each painting became a treatise in itself.

Scotland had come late to the idea of self-portraiture, the first known example executed in the early 17th century by “the father of Scottish painting”, George Jamesone. The artist presents himself as an elegant young gentleman, pointing nonchalantly to a wall full of his creations. For another hundred years, the self-portrait functioned primarily as a professional advertisement, consciously elevating the status of the artist from craftsman to gentleman.

With this promotion complete, the self-portrait became a far more complex beast. Two paintings by the talented Runciman brothers signal key directions the genre would take. John Runciman’s dreamy image of 1767 is dashing, romantic, and suggests an inner world which is hidden from us by the artist’s own hand, and by a dark shadow across his face. He seems to be scrutinizing us as much as we watch him.

John died tragically young, but nearly 20 years later his brother Alexander was to produce a double portrait which would make an elaborate play of the idea of the watcher and the watched. Placing himself next to his friend, John Brown, the pair’s eyes are fixed on us. Brown points out some fault in what he sees, and Runciman, crayon at the ready, is poised to correct us – perhaps a daub of light on our nose, a fleck of pink in our cheek. Though the two figures cram themselves into the frame, we become the picture.

From here, the story of Scottish portraiture follows two roads. On the one hand, John Runciman’s romantic, half-concealed inner self anticipates the shadowy brooding of David Wilkie’s self-representation, and Andrew Geddes’s flamboyant hero. On the other, the shifting relationships created by Alexander Runciman’s narrative portrait herald a new fascination with gulf between the self and the way it’s seen by others. Both roads lead from this point, through the exhibition, right up to the present day.

With the arrival of modernism in the 19th century, the Scottish self-portrait embraced the heroic artistic figure. William Quiller Orchardson cuts a dash in full profile, presenting himself for scrutiny without giving anything away. The Colourists made even bolder style statements; in its directness, simplicity, and emotional ambiguity, JD Fergusson’s suave-suited persona would beat any Warhol hands down.

A decade later, in 1920, in one of Scotland’s best self-portraits, Cecile Walton successfully breached all the unspoken rules of pictorial engagement. Her monumental canvas, featuring the artist half-naked after giving birth, is a complex web of symbolism and art-historical reference. She is at once a prostitute and the virgin Mary. She is in control, and yet totally prostrate. She challenges us without even turning to look.

Late Modernism was to bring with it the foreboding, primitive lines of William Gear’s thickly inked head, and the tormented river of flames by William Crozier, in which a skull with a beak might stand for the face of the artist. Along with strong international influences, these images are directly descended from John Runciman’s first forays into the inner self.

Moving into postmodernism, the philosophical thread, now centuries old, is no less apparent. Boyle Family’s two-part photocopy, made in the late 1970s, is one of an annual series. DEATH PROCESSion studied one square inch of Mark Boyle’s skin every January “until the death of the subject”. A photograph of the artist functions as little more than a map of his skin, presented next to the enlarged section.

Despite the clinical detachment of this piece, our instinct tells us that its results fall far short of the truth. No matter how carefully we study every pore and fold of Mark Boyle’s skin, it won’t reveal an ounce of the man’s charm. Skin can be weighed; charisma can’t. The piece, whose title refers to the body’s inevitable decay, is made all the more poignant by the artist’s death one year ago.

Angela Palmer addresses the mind-body problem further with her captivating sculpture, made from 14 sheets of glass, each engraved with an MRI scan of her head. The stuff of her brain is given equal prominence to the contours of her face; the argument as to which of these divided selves constitutes the real Angela Palmer will go on for centuries to come.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 07.05.06